Nearly Departed in Deadwood (37 page)

      I stopped struggling whenever his gaze was on me. “Did she hurt you?”

      “Hurt? Ha!” His grin scared me as much as my dead tea party mates did. “She told me every day how she wished I’d died instead of Wilda. She plastered the walls of my room with rose-covered wallpaper, made me wear dresses and play with dolls, buried my toys in the backyard.”

      “So that rusted toy train Layne found ...”

      “A Christmas present from my grandfather.”

      I might have had a lump in my throat for little Wolfgang had I not been trussed up and about to be marinated in liquid fuel by the bastard. “Did she hit you?”

      “She knew better. Wilda wouldn’t have liked that.”

      “Is your mom hurting you now?” Did he have her dried, rat-chewed corpse sitting in a rocking chair in the basement? Did he like to wear a wig and pretend to be her?

      “Violet.” He looked at me like I was a silly ninny. “Mother has been dead for years. How could she hurt me now?”

      Well, excuse me for confusing the
nearly
departed with the
dearly
departed in his psychotic hallucination.

      He lifted the cake and set it on the table. Then he pulled a square piece of paper from his shirt pocket and placed it in the center of the cake. I crooked my head to the side, squinting in the candlelight at the black-and-white photo. A curly-haired, blonde girl glowered back at me.

      He stuck a clown candle next to the picture. “Wilda has always loved clowns,” he explained.

      Wilda? Sitting back, I continued to stare at the picture, everything falling into place. From Wolfgang’s fascination with my hair to the clowns plastering the rooms downstairs, it all made sense now—twisted as it was. Neither Wolfgang nor his mother could let go of Wilda. She’d possessed them both long after her death. 

      I glared at the waxen fool jammed into the icing. There wasn’t anything the slightest bit funny about his rainbow suspenders, big shoes, or the wick sticking out of his top hat. I wanted to mash it with a sledgehammer.

      “Mother hated me, but the penalty she doled out eased with time.” Wolfgang squirted the cake with some lighter fluid. “Wilda’s vengeance keeps growing stronger, more painful.”

      I wanted to raise my hand and remind him that she was dead, too. At least I thought she was. I glanced over my shoulder, checking for a young girl, coiled up in a corner, waiting to strike, but found only shadows. “I thought Wilda was gone, too.”

      “Oh, no, Wilda is still here.” The surety in his tone made my limbs quiver harder.

      I jerked on my bindings, my right hand close to freedom. If I could just get some leverage. 

      “She refuses to leave me alone.” He held the can of lighter fluid toward me. “Unless I kill the one I love.”

      Expecting to get squirted, I shrank away. “Why kill?” I couldn’t keep the panic from my voice. “Can’t you talk her into a minor maiming instead?”

      He frowned and dropped to his knees beside me, placing the lighter fluid on the floor. “No. She’s the eye-for-an-eye type.”

      “But I didn’t do anything to her.”

      “I did, and she won’t leave me alone.”

      “What did you do?”

      “She was a bad seed, Violet, sprouting thorns early. I had to stop her before she could murder anyone else.”

      “Who did she murder?”

      “My father.”

      I turned to him, my eyes wide. He had my full attention now. “I thought your mother poisoned him.”

      Wolfgang shook his head. “You’ve been listening to rumors. It was Wilda. I was five, she was seven. He wouldn’t let her join the swim team, wanted to punish her for feeding the neighbor’s dog a bunch of Alka Seltzer tabs for no reason other than the pleasure of seeing the animal suffer.” He captured a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “So she poisoned him. Mixed Diazinon with the coffee in the canister he took down in the mine every day.”

      Damn. Wolfgang’s whole family had been cuckoo for Coco Puffs. “So you killed Wilda?”

      “I didn’t intend to kill her, just hurt her.” His eyes were dry, his voice steady. “Wilda had said she was going to poison the only girl on her swim team who was faster than her in the backstroke. I tried to stop her, threatened to tell Mother. She’d swore she’d cut off my ear if I tattled. So I pushed her down the stairs and told everyone she’d tripped.”

      My mouth fell open. “How old were you then?”

      “Eight.”

      “Oh, God, Wolfgang. You were just a kid.”

      “Mother always knew I was to blame for Wilda’s death. She’d stare at me, hatred in her eyes.”

      And I thought the Liberace records my mom used to make me listen to were torture.

      “Wilda died that day,” he continued, “but she never really went away. At first, she followed me around the house, always there, always silent. But ever since Mother died, Wilda has become irate, loud, even violent.” He rubbed his temples, his face crinkling as if the agony was crushing him. “She won’t leave me alone. She screams at me nonstop, blaming me, threatening to destroy all of the good in my life.”

      “Is she screaming now?”

      He stood and picked up the can of lighter fluid, his gaze focused over my head. “No.”

      Goosebumps streaked up my spine, scattering shudders along the way. I peeked over my shoulder and saw nothing but the bedroom door. “What is she doing?”

      “Just watching. Making sure I follow through.”

      Had she noticed that my right hand had just slipped free of its binding? Because Wolfgang hadn’t.

      “I have to get rid of her, Violet.” He continued to stare at the bedroom door. “She’s driving me insane.”

     
Driving?
I glanced at the corpse across from me. I’d say he’d already arrived at Looney-town and was setting up shop.

      “Why did you kill
them
?” I nodded toward my tea-mates, unsure how they fit into this grisly tale. “Did Wilda tell you to?”

      “Of course not. She doesn’t even know them.”

      There went my only theory. “Then why?”

      “I thought they would appease her, since they all swam the backstroke.” He shrugged as if their deaths were incidental, just flies stuck to a sticky strip. “Calm her down. Stop the screaming.”

      What? Like goats to lure and feed an angry troll?
Jesus!

      Speaking of luring, I asked, “How did you get the girls to come to you?” To get within reach?

      “Most little girls love sparkly crystals and gems, especially in the shape of a pretty flower bouquet or cute pink teddy bear and offered with a friendly smile. I see the desire to touch and possess time and again in their wide eyes as they stare through my store’s front window with chocolate smeared on their hands and mouths. Even Addy couldn’t resist, I’m sure. How is she liking that rhinestone unicorn? I made it special for her, you know.”

     
Oh, God!
I recoiled at the memory of Addy’s glee when she opened the unicorn gift at the hospital. I’d throw that broach down a mine shaft if I made it out of here breathing.

      So he’d enticed the girls with jewelry. No wonder they’d fallen into his hands.

      They were innocent little girls with their whole lives ahead of them. How could the same man who showed such kindness and compassion to my daughter so easily snatch the breath from these girls and prop them up at this table like macabre dolls?

      I blinked back more tears, my eyes aching from the fumes and the truth. Maybe they were just dolls to him. Like those his mother made him play with instead of the train.

      He petted my head. “Only you can placate Wilda, my beautiful Violet, because it’s only you I love.”

      That was just swell. What an honor. I wanted to bite his hand. The fool didn’t love me, he loved his sister. Some twisted, psycho, almost incestuous type of love. I just had the bad luck of having curly, blonde hair like hers.

      “I don’t want to burn to death, Wolfgang. Did Wilda specify how I had to die?”

      His brows drawn, he stared down at the lighter fluid in his hand as if he’d forgotten he was holding onto it. “What? Oh, no. I’m not going to burn you alive, darling. That’s just cruel.”

      What part of sacrificing me was humane? “Then how are you going to kill me? With more roofies?”

      “That wasn’t Rohypnol I gave you. It was Burundanga.” He walked over to the curtains and sprayed them with lighter fluid. “It’s a popular trance-inducing drug from Colombia.”

      “Explain the difference.” While his back was to me, I picked at the knot tying me to the chair.

      “Do you remember what happened before you woke up in here?”

      I frowned as my fingers worked on my bindings, trying to remember how I got here. Unfortunately, everything prior to waking up at the tea party was a fuzzy bundle of memories. The taste of tomatoes on my tongue and the smell of roast chicken was all I could recall. “No.”

      “Exactly. If the correct amount is administered, it won’t even fully knock you out.”

      “But I was knocked out.” Hadn’t I been?

      “I didn’t expect you to drink your wine so fast.”

      “How long was I out?”

      “A couple of hours,” he emptied the second can of lighter fluid on the bed. “Not long enough to interfere with my plans, though.”

      Nice of me to be so considerate of his schedule. “Now what?” I asked, stalling for another minute or two.

      He tossed both empty cans in the shopping bag. “Now, you have to die.”

      “I was afraid of that.”

      “It’s the only way I’ll be free.” He opened the bedroom door. I heard the cans clink as he dropped the bag in the hall. “After you’re gone, Wilda will go, too, and I’ll burn the house to the ground around you. With all of the dry rot in these walls, the fire will burn so hot it will take them weeks to find any trace of you and the others in the ashes. Then, like a Phoenix, I’ll rise, reborn, my life fresh and unmarred.”

      I’d like another plan, please. One that didn’t involve seared flesh. My heartbeat echoed in my fingertips and toes. “They’ll come looking for you.”

      “Of course they will.” He leaned over me. “However, I’ll be long gone by then. A new man, a new identity, free from her at last.”

      The crazed glitter in the depths of his blue eyes made me gulp and recoil.

      “I’ll always love you, Violet.” His lips hovered over mine, his fingers entwined in my hair. “So divine, even in death.”

      Hold the phone! My ticker might be knocking like an angry landlord, but it was still pumping adrenaline through my limbs. I wasn’t ready for a dirt nap, yet.

      His lips covered mine, the taste of wine faint on his tongue. I slinked down in my chair under the weight of his kiss, my mouth open for whatever he had to offer as my fingers found the knot and tore at it.

      So close, just a bit longer.

      He pulled away. “I’ll make it quick.”

      Crap! “Can I have one last request?”

      “That’s so cliché, dear.”

      “I know, but give a girl one last wish.”

      “Maybe.” He crossed his arms. “What is it?”

      “A chicken leg.”

      “What?”

      “A leg from that roasted chicken you made for dinner. I want one.”

      “You can’t be serious.”

      “Why not? I don’t want to die hungry. Let me at least have the dignity of dying with a full stomach.”

      For a second, I didn’t think he was going to relent. Then he smiled. I wanted to kick in his white teeth.

      “All right. A leg of chicken it is.” He closed the door behind him, leaving me untied and alone—not counting the three corpses staring at me.

      Or Wilda.

     
Chapter Twenty-Four

      I sprang from my chair so fast I had to catch it to stop it from tipping over. Yanking off the stupid tiara, I jammed it in the cake next to the clown candle. Then I slipped off my heels and headed for the window. I knew the drop to the backyard below had to be twenty feet—an ankle-breaker, but my options weren’t plentiful at the moment.

      The curtains reeked of lighter fluid. I pinched the edge of the thick cloth, trying to keep my skin fuel-free. When I peeled back the fabric, my stomach plummeted. Boards covered most of the window, leaving peepholes here and there. I peeked out through one gap. Stars twinkled overhead. An orange glow off to the right pinpointed downtown Deadwood, but darkness shrouded the yard below.

      I let go of the curtain and wrung my hands.
What now?

      The door beckoned, escape just a staircase away.

      I scurried past the tea party, my eyes on the doorknob, my brain already outside on the front lawn, and my foot connected with one of the chair legs. I grabbed the dresser as I fell to keep from thudding onto my ass and alerting Wolfgang.

      Pulling myself upright, my forearm bumped one of the lit candles. I lunged to catch it ... and missed.

      The candle clunked as it hit the floor. I cringed. In an instant, the lit wick found the fuel-coated floorboards, igniting a whoosh of fire that sent me back-pedaling toward the door. I twisted the knob and wrenched open the door just as the flames licked Emma Cranson’s ankles. A fireball shot to the ceiling with a roar. I shielded my face with my arms, my skin roasting. The stench of burning hair and flesh made me retch.

      Coughing from the billowing smoke, I stumbled toward the staircase and saw Wolfgang running from the dining room. He halted at the bottom, his eyes wide as he stared up at me, my every muscle stiff with panic.

      The fire crackled as it spread. With another whoosh, heat spilled into the hall.

      “You’re out of your chair,” he accused.

      The sound of his voice spurred me to life and I sprinted down the hall to the bathroom. The pounding of his shoes up the stairs chased me along. At the last moment I veered and skidded into the green bedroom, the one I’d been locked out of last week—his mother’s room.